A large assembly system may be used to progressively assemble products or other articles of manufacture. The assembly system may include tens or hundreds of assembly stations at which various components or subassemblies are combined to create the products. Machines or human personnel at each assembly station may be responsible for a small portion of the completed product. For example, assembly personnel at one assembly station may add a single component to in-process products; an automated machine or assembly robot may add another component to in-process products at another assembly station. More concretely, an automobile may be assembled from thousands of components at hundreds of different assembly stations. In particular, assembly personnel at some assembly stations may add small parts, such as screws, bolts or wiring harnesses to the interior of an in-process automobile; assembly robots at other assembly stations may add large components or subassemblies, such as engines, transmissions, quarter-panels or windshields.
An assembly system may include various computer controls, systems and software to control aspects of the assembly process. For example, in an automobile assembly system, a central computer system may control various robots that install windshields at a particular assembly station. The central computer system may also store certain data related to the assembly process. For example, the computer system may temporarily store data related to a specific automobile during the assembly of that specific automobile; the computer system may archive other data related to all automobiles, such as certain safety-related data. The CIMPLICITY Tracker™ System by GE FANUC of Charlottesville, Va., is one example software package that an automobile manufacturer may employ to control portions of an automobile assembly system and to archive various data associated with the automobile assembly system.